April Fools' Day 2013: A roundup of the best tech gags

In what has become an annual Web tradition, the Internet has once again used April 1 as an excuse to go completely insane with pranks, hijinks, and other assorted fake-outs. Some are great, while others aren't worth your time. If you're not entirely sick of April Fools' Day already, you'll want to pop over to these sites and see what they've done.

Google gets all kinds of goofy

As usual, Google has led the charge and gone completely off the rails with a wholly unnecessary dedication to April Foolishness across several of its brands.

Why just depend on sight, sound, and haptic feedback for your Web experience when there is so much to experience through smell?! Thankfully, Google has used its teams of engineers along with "expertly curated Knowledge Panels" to fill in this missing experience with its new Google Nose web application. Click on the "Try Google Nose" button for a collection of great smells from around the Internet.

Last September, Google discovered a treasure map that has been verified as belonging to the infamous pirate Captain Kidd. To help find Kidd's treasure, the Google Maps team created an overlay in the top left corner of the Google Maps page to assist with the hunt along with a needlessly well-produced video describing the whole thing.

In a completely not-subtle shot at the upcoming Windows 8 upgrade "Blue," Google created this mock video promoting a new version of Gmail that answers the question "how do we completely redesign and create something while keeping it exactly the same?" Microsoft also got in its barbs against Google, as you'll see later on.

"Many months of research on how people communicate on the Internet have convinced us that when it comes to expressing yourself, nothing beats the richness and elegance of a few properly placed colons, parentheses, letters, and hyphens." Try clicking on the smiley icon on the top of your G+ lightbox to add emoticon goodness to your photos. Something tells me it might not be available tomorrow.

Google Fiber is the search giant's program to bring high-power Internet connectivity to the Kansas City metro area. And, just in time for April 1, Google is offering Fiber to The Pole, which will foster a sense of community by enabling users to connect directly to the service via special telephone poles throughout the city.

As you know, the Google-owned YouTube launched in 2005 as a contest to find the best videos on the Internet. And now, YouTube will finally be closing down and start the arduous task of choosing the best Web video of all time. The winner gets $500 and an mp3 player that clips to their sleeve. Good luck, everybody!